DrabbleFiclets
by TheBetterPoison
Summary: This initial drabble ended up being longer than expected, so I decided to post it (and future lengthy drabbles) here! Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

Part I—'Round We Go

Mercedes had just trashed her tall cup of popcorn and dusted her hands to get the salt off her fingertips. After waiting in line for a few minutes and talking—somewhat—to Sam talk about places around the city that they should check out; places they hadn't visited the last time they were in New York. Their last trip was, of course, already on her mind more so because of their current wait at the carousel.

_The glee club—against Mr. Schue's orders—scattered in pairs and clusters about the Big Apple Having spent some time here and there together since prom, Sam and Mercedes gravitated to one another and after goofing around at a few different places, they ended up stumbling upon a year-round carnival setup. The two were only vaguely aware of the passing day as they went from ride to ride to game, and only took a break to get food. Before heading off to catch a cab, Mercedes talked Sam into one last ride—the carousel. _

_They were sitting on the ride's benches, facing one another; Sam propped his feet up on Mercedes' bench and Mercedes had been all smiles from the carefree day. Eventually Sam brought up Nationals, and that prompted Mercedes into talking about how she wasn't all that on board with the New Directions doing original songs at the last minute. How she was telling him about Jesse's "lazy" comment for her solo audition._

_Sam was in the midst of licking the last of some cotton candy off of his fingertips and lips when he asked, "So let's say things were going your way, and you got the solo this time. What song would you sing?"_

_Rather than telling him, Mercedes decided to show him. Hardly bothered by the terrible carnival music playing ahead, she stood up, gripping the nearest gold pole for balance, "Well…like I told Jesse, I feel the songs I perform and this song's been on my mind a lot lately so it'd probably be this one." She threw Sam a quick smile and then began to sing the first verse to "Natural Woman". _

_He wasn't familiar with the song right away, but seconds before she belted out the renowned chorus he figured out what song it was and smiled up at her. It wasn't news to Sam just how incredible of a singer Mercedes was, but hearing her flawlessly carry the tune had him paying better attention to the lyrics. And that's when he'd begun wondering to himself if the song was directed to him. Her occasional glances back to him further pushed that wonder into an assumption that had his heartbeat picking up. His own words were echoing in his mind of telling Puck, Mike, and Finn at the hotel that if he wasn't broke and homeless…he'd "totally go for it". _

_The recollection pulled him out of his reverie. He was suddenly aware of the heat on his cheeks and the rush of feelings coinciding with the fun and relaxing day he'd been having with Mercedes. Panic-stricken as the ride retarded, Sam swung his feet from the opposing bench and rushed off, leaving Mercedes behind._

_She stopped singing and the second the ride stopped, she hopped off and followed after him. Her attempts seemed in vain at first but eventually she caught up with him coming out of the bathroom with flecks of water near his hairline. She and Sam agreed to talk while they walked back to one of the main streets to catch a cab, and he explained his reason for taking off so suddenly. It was there that Mercedes let him know of her returned feelings for him; Sam expelled his former concerns and fears and took a chance. However, he and Mercedes agreed to keep their relationship lowkey while they tried to figure things out._

When it seemed Sam picked up on her quietness, she felt a light nudge against her fur coat, causing her to snap her gaze up at him.

"You alright?"

"Oh..yeah. Sorry, I was just thinking."

Sam smiled, "About when we were here three years ago? Yeah, me too. It's kinda why I wanted to come back with you. All the rides…"

"The fun house."

"The corn dogs. The tilt-a-whirl…"

She'd meant to give him a reproachful stare but her lips twitched at the corners, and then her eyes dropped to the concrete. A moment later, the carousel came to a stop and the attendant slid back the latch on the gate to let the waiting group on while the other riders exited. Mercedes opted for the still-sitting bench and stared out at the carnival-esque scene, steeling herself from more of the old memories that were creeping up her chest. Soon the ride started and the corny music sounded overhead. Young passengers were giggling at the way their horses bobbed up and down, and parents stood nearby to secure their children's safety. Mercedes' eyes were growing dizzy from staring out at the spinning scene so she looked over to Sam who appeared to be waiting for her to meet his gaze.

"Mercedes, I've been wanting to tell you something."

Her brows raised, "Hm?"

Sam paused and then started in, direct as usual. "I tried to move on after you broke up with me." With a humorless chuckle he mumbled, "I kinda feel like I lost my mind a little bit after you left for LA. And each time you came back to help or support the glee club, seeing you again…"

He saw Mercedes' chest rise and fall, and after a quick glance at the scene spinning around them, he looked back to her.

"I know I was with Brittany and all…I shouldn't have been."

"You know I'm not gonna lie, I was a little surprised at that."

"Yeah?"

Mercedes' entire face flattened. "I heard you put cheerios on the damn floor for her, Sam."

Sam sucked his cheeks in and looked up, trying to form his response. He could feel his cheeks warming a bit as he said, "I told you, I feel like I lost my mind a little. I know I said and did stupid things after you dumped me again. But after graduation I spent half of the summer with my family, and then I came here to start working. And I think being out of Lima's been helpful for me. Sort've. Coming back here wasn't the magical cure for all my problems. If it were, things with me right now would be different. I'd be over me getting in the way of myself."

His face was a little sterner toward the end of all he'd said. He wasn't fully aware of it, but when he looked back into Mercedes' eyes, he clearly and unabashedly admitted to her, "You and I were just…We're right for each other. _I'm_ at my best when I'm with you and I—"

"Sam…" she started.

"I know what you're going to say. I'm not trying to guilt you or anything, Mercedes. It's just the truth."

His eyes dropped from her face to his lap again while sitting across from her on the carousel. Again he found himself putting his heart on his sleeve for Mercedes, not entirely sure of himself on what the outcome would be this time.

"You gave me two prom nights I'll never forget. You saw me and wanted to know me, and I do believe you when you say you were at your best those times we were together. And…You've encouraged me, fought for me, and let me love you, and I…I keep falling for you."

One side of Sam's lips quirked up, and when he felt Mercedes' chilly hand slide over his gloved one, he turned his wide palm up to hold it. She squeezed his hand, while uttering one word that made Sam tense.

"But…"

He kept his composure while listening to her say, "I don't know if we can do this to ourselves again."

"Do what? Give our relationship another try? Like Puck and Quinn, or Santana and Brittany?"

"But you know how I feel about the long distance thing."

"Again…like Puck and Quinn or Santana and Brittany are doing? Besides, I thought you were going to be moving here."

"But I don't know for how long."

Sam could hardly believe what he was hearing. The sheet between the hurt and skepticism he was feeling, and what Mercedes was seeing was wearing thin. He let go of Mercedes hand and situated himself to fully face her. "You got an apartment, Mercedes. If you weren't planning to stay long, wouldn't your label just put you up in a hotel or let you crash with Kurt and m—Blaine?"

Mercedes grimaced shamefully. "It's not that, Sam. It's…while you were in the shower this morning, I got a call from my manager and I was telling her I was hanging out with you and she just…"

Sam's forehead creased, confused and trying to hold his other prudent feelings at bay, "Just what?"

"She's got me trying to create this whole image thing while I'm working on my album and—"

"Hold on," said Sam, interrupting her rushed words. The carousel was beginning to slow. "You don't want to date me again because dating me would ruin your image? You do know when I asked you 'it's because I'm white, right?' I wasn't serious, right?"

A small part of Mercedes wanted to laugh—she remembered, and she wanted it to still be funny, but having recalled her conversation with her manager, Sam wasn't that far off from the elder woman's assertion on her and Sam dating.

His head fell back slightly and he looked away while mumbling, "I don't believe this."

"Sam I didn't agree to anything with her. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been on my mind today."

At that, he looked back to her and glaring, "Mercedes, do you hear what you're saying? You're basically rejecting me because of your image. Of what it'd do or wouldn't do for you. The last time we were here—on this same ride, and why I left? Why I didn't want to date you? It was more than me not being able to afford to do much for you. I didn't feel like I was good enough for you. I didn't want you to be seen as the hot, well-off diva with the poor kid."

Mercedes shook her head back and forth while barely mustering the voice to argue, "It's not the same thing, Sam. What if we have a fight in public, or we break up, or I do hit it big? Everything we want to do or try to do will be under a microscope. You know I don't care who you are—you could be Black, White, Asian, striped, it wouldn't matter to me, but—"

"You know what?" Sam stood from the bench as the carousel came to a stop. He looked down at Mercedes, visibly hurt but steeling himself. "_I don't _care about all of that. I'm pursuing modeling. My biggest issues have all had to do with myself, _like always_. About me not feeling good enough, or looking good enough—_being_ good enough. But_ you_ were the one more than anybody who helped me get over that when we were together, and even when we weren't because you accepted everything about me, no matter what I was doing. You don't think I already know what the media and even people within industries like yours or mine might say or think if we were to openly be together? I do. And I don't care because they wouldn't be _in_ this relationship. I never thought you cared though. I guess I was wrong."

Struck hard by Sam's words and rendered speechless, Mercedes was anchored to the bench while Sam wrenched away, weaved between a couple of horses and speedily stalked away from the ride, not unlike last time.

This time, however, Mercedes did not follow him.


	2. Chapter 2

Part II—'Bridge of Light'

She didn't know how she'd done it; her response to Sam wasn't how she wanted to broach the talk with her manager. Again, he was giving her his heart, and again she had him leaving, hurt. This time was different. There wasn't another guy, and there wasn't any infidelity. Somehow this felt just as bad as her senior year, however.

It had been a struggle for her to figure out what to do. She needed advice, or to at least talk out the incident with another person. Without needing to give much thought as to who to call, Mercedes snatched her phone from the empty half of her bed and scrolled through her contacts. After two rings she got a hoarse, "Hello?" from Kurt.

"Did I wake you up?"

"You know every person who says 'no' to that is lying…" He half expected a chuckle or some quick agreement; instead, he got a wet sniff through the receiving end that made him soften his voice further, "Mercedes, are you alright?"

"No. Kurt, I messed up."

After catching a quick glance at a slumbering Blaine, Kurt quietly eased out of the bed and padded out to the living room—his voice still low and gentle. "What are you talking about?"

"With Sam. Everything came out wrong. I feel awful…"

"Waait, wait, slow down." He sighed and muttered, "I knew something was up with him earlier. Anyway, take a deep breath, and tell me what happened, from the beginning."

Starting with another sniff, Mercedes relayed everything, beginning with the phone call she'd gotten with her manager and ending with her having gotten back to her apartment to shed her tears.

"Ouch…" he empathized. "So…you said before that it all came out wrong. What _did_ you mean to tell him?"

"I feel like I don't even know anymore. It was stupid to have brought it up or for me to have even let it be on my mind after I hung up with her. I guess I just wanted to be honest with him—tell him what had happened when I talked to her earlier."

Kurt stifled a yawn, "Well before she called you, what were you feeling about Sam? I mean you'd been spending a lot of time with him since you got here."

"I know and I'm not gonna act like a lot of old feelings didn't come back and hit me fast and hard…and then he told me he'd basically felt the same way and I chose _then_ to tell him about that stupid call." Midway through a sigh, Mercedes' head swished back and forth, "Kurt, I need to make this right. You remember me telling you all that stuff he did for me senior year?"

"Uhh-huh, your name in lights, the St. Valentine's thing, and don't forget I knew about the YouTube video before you did…but what about it?"

"I wanna do something memorable for him. He's constantly making me feel special—big or small gestures. I want to do that for him too, with my apology."

While sitting cross-legged on the couch, Kurt drummed his fingers on the bend of his leg and hummed a short, "Hmm… well there's the carnival. That seems like a significant place for you guys, and maybe a good place to hold Operation: Grand Apology."

"Yeah but after what's happened last night, I don't think I could get him to meet me there anytime soon." As Mercedes considered a few places she knew of that might be good for the 'Grand Apology' as Kurt put it, a light bulb went off in her head. "Kurt, you've seen the first _Sex and the City_ movie, right?"

Although she couldn't see, Kurt rolled his eyes, "Only about a dozen times thanks to Sugar. When she was in glee club with us, we hung out a few times at her place and she'd put that on .time. I eventually put and end to that and introdu—"

"Okay okay. 'Yes' would've worked," she said with a light chuckle. "I think I've got an idea…"

Her eyes were glancing down at her phone screen every few seconds as she stood near one entrance of the windy Brooklyn Bridge, anxiously waiting. A ways on the path, she could see three musicians huddled with two of them resting acoustic guitars in their lap, and the third wielded a saxophone. They were buzzing and strumming notes here and there under the guise of being street performers, but Mercedes knew better and was thankful for Kurt getting the NYADA students to help out so suddenly the following afternoon.

She tugged the black mink coat a little closer to herself, but it didn't stop the quick shiver that made her shoulders shimmy. There were few passersby, talking to one another or on their cell phones, and even a couple of cyclists sped past, but the silence of her phone had her nervousness growing inside her chest. While clutching tight to her phone, Mercedes shut her eyes and took a deep, cold breath. The look on Sam's face before she last saw him, and the way she remembered feeling in that moment came rushing to the front of her mind, making the feelings inside her worse. She did her best to push them out of her mind; the worst he could do after this was not accept her apology and explanation.

While reminding herself of this, through a few more focused breaths in and out, her phone jingled. Mercedes' eyes snapped open and her chin dropped as she read, "Come on," from Kurt. She knew what that meant, and with one more noisy breath out, Mercedes stuck her phone inside her jean pocket and advanced onto the bridge. She let her doe-shaped eyes sift through the mild crowd until she spotted Sam walking beside a chatting Kurt. Sam's grimacing face had her hoping more than before that she might be able to set things right—to return a little of the many attention-grabbing but romantic gestures he'd done for her in the past.

Her eyes locked with one of the guitarists who'd been staring at her for some time. Once she'd given him a small nod, however, he turned his attention to the other two musicians and soon the first had begun playing. His fingers were pinched tight over the strings near the guitar's body while his other set of fingers plucked two shimmering notes back and forth. The second guitarist soon joined in after, loudly strumming four separate, escalating notes. Their melody was all too familiar to Mercedes as she took a deep breath, locked her eyes on Sam and sang.

Sam hadn't thought much about the music that started on the bridge. He was doing his best to keep up with Kurt's prattling over potential wedding venues and tuxedos, but the turn of events from the night before were still clouding his mind. Occasionally Kurt would give him a friendly elbow to try and shake the morose look on his face but somehow his features ended up drawn down again. He reached up to adjust his black earmuffs as a faint but familiar voice filled the air around him. Brows knitted, Sam looked up from the toes of his brown boots to the clusters of people in front of them until he saw her—black fedora, equally black coat, dark, plump pink lips, round cheeks and her doe-shaped eyes staring right back at him as she sang out.

"_Some people live for the fortune.  
Some people live just for the fame.  
Some people live for the power;  
some people live just to play the game_…"

For a moment, Sam pulled out of his bittersweet stupor to ask Kurt a question but the elder teen had long since halted his steps. It was just Sam gazing down at Mercedes as she approached him with gradual strides.

"_Some people think that the physical things define what's within  
and I've been there before, but that's life's a bore—  
so full of the superficial_…"

Sam started to turn back, looking to place an accusatory glance at Kurt, but Mercedes shot her hands out and gripped his forearms tight, demanding his attention while she belted out the chorus. Her expression was fierce; focused and sincere with hope—just like the words that left her mouth.

"_Some people want it all, but I don't want nothing at all, if it ain't you, baby—if I ain't got you baby_…"

As she sang the second half of the chorus, "_Some people want diamond rings, some just want everything, but everything means nothing if I ain't got you_…" Mercedes rolled her shoulders back, letting the coat fall off of them. Her hands reached behind her back and she yanked one sleeve and then the other. She couldn't help smiling through her singing from the confused expression that was crossing Sam's face, but she it didn't stop her pulling the coat entirely off her body and hoisting it over the side of the bridge. Her arms were spread, welcoming the cold breeze over her body while repeating the chorus.

"'_Cause nothin' in this whole world don't mean a thing, if I ain't got you with me, baby_…"

The guitarists and saxophonist played a little more to conclude the song, and a few passersby clapped for the four of them. Sam was fighting his signature crooked smile but he'd lost and ducked his head as he started taking his own jacket off. Mercedes' caught her breath and though she hadn't worn enough layers to keep warm, she spoke, loudly enough for Sam to hear her. "Sam, I needed you to know… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel like you were gonna be this...stain on my image if we started dating again. Yes, my _music_'s important to me, but I let my manager get in my head and that was wrong. She's known me for a handful of months, through calls and meetings. But it doesn't mean she knows me. No doubt a lot of her advice for me will be out of her self-interest, and that's fine when it comes to my music sometimes, but…I don't need an image, and I don't need people who hardly know me telling me who I need to be with. I just need you. I need Sam Evans."

Her teeth started to chatter toward the end; she was shivering but she steeled herself against the chilly weather, jaw clenched, waiting for a response and unsure if she would get one. Her fingers closed into tight fists at her sides and she tried to gauge the look on Sam's face as he stood before her, half out of his jacket and gazing hard at the grey-blue water. She saw the muscles along his jaw roll while he pursed his full lips together.

When it seemed he wasn't going to respond, Mercedes lowered her gaze. "I just…needed you to know that." With a few conclusive nods, she turned to thank the NYADA musicians but before her teeth and tongue could get past the "Th—"

"I think you need a coat, first."

Mercedes tucked her lips in. Her cheeks were the only things that had begun to feel warm; she turned back around to see Sam casting his signature soft smile at her. Now with his olive green jacket fully removed, he closed the space between them again, lifting his arms to cloak the jacket around her. Mercedes held it close without letting her eyes leave Sam's face. He let his fingers linger on the collar—his thumbs brushing her face as he covered her hands with his gloved pair.

"Thank you," Mercedes murmured.

Still softly smiling, Sam gave her a 'you're welcome' nod.

"We'll take things at our own pace."

"Like the last time we were here?" he spoke in a low voice.

The corners of Mercedes' lips rose, "Like the _first_ time we were here."

Sam's smile filled out enough for the creases at the corners of his eyes to appear. He spoke through the happy expression, "So then… there's still my copy of _Pacific Rim_ sitting at your place. And you still haven't seen it…"

Mercedes chuckled, bearing a full smile of her own, "So we needa get out of this cold and go watch it."

Without another word there, Sam wound an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. Mercedes gladly obliged, already feeling warmer than before. As soon as she looked up, Sam was tipping her fedora back to press a kiss to her forehead—gentle yet firm at the same time. He tugged it back in place again and began the walk back across the bridge beside Mercedes. In that lasting moment, there was nothing else either of them wanted or needed to say.

-the end-


End file.
